I really hope they don't stop improving the s9 anytime soon. (I would really like to see seamless crossfading on the s9 in the near future =D)

When they do stop developing new firmware for the s9 however, I hope they would at least release the source code to the community so fans of the device with programming knowledge could try to improve it themselves. This is unprecedented, but I hope Cowon would step up above the rest of the mp3 player manufacturers and make this history.

When you look at the fact that Cowon continually updated the D2 for years, and that the S9 is clearly their "baby", I would be pretty confident in saying there will be more fw upgrades.

My guess is this one is taking a long time because what they are trying to implement is not easy to do, or is very time consuming at the least.

Cowon have done some pretty significant upgrades with the S9, such as gapless which western users have been asking them for for a long time. My guess is that they are putting everything into making this (as they name it) "the ultimate" dap, so I'd expect some big fw upgrades to come.

Yeah, I'm expecting Cowon to continue updates too. I think they're going to ride on the success of the S9 for a while, and keep updating and promoting it. They had that white release a while back, remember? :P

It could just be they're making some major changes. If they're implementing dynamic song queuing (like the Creative Zen series uses), it would basically be a complete overhaul of how the playback system works. That would take some time, but would be well worth the wait.